1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to rifle bullets and, more particularly, is concerned with a bullet having a jacket with a reverse taper configuration providing an interlock with the core of the bullet and with a method of manufacturing the reverse taper jacketed bullet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A satisfactory big game bullet must achieve several competing objectives. The bullet must fly accurately at high velocity and penetrate the hide of the game without creating a large surface wound. Thereafter, the bullet must stop abruptly in the game with minimal fragmentation to deliver maximum shock effect to the game while preserving its meat and hide.
Conventional game bullets, being similar in their general make-up to the bullet disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,345,949 to J. A. Nosler, are composed of a core of lead enclosed in a jacket having a generally cylindrical body with a thin ductile wall and a forward tapered end through which extends the forward end of the lead core. When a bullet of this general composition hits the game, it will usually achieve satisfactory penetration, but the tendency is for its lead core to move forward and "wash" off, fragment and/or separate from its jacket as the jacket tears open and starts to peel back into a mushroom-shaped configuration. The end result is that a substantial proportion of the weight of the bullet is lost as it travels through the game which reduces the energy of the shock effect on the game and distributes fragments of lead throughout a large region of the game. Attempts to better contain the lead core by hardening the jacket have the disadvantage of preventing the jacket from mushrooming properly, which frequently results in the bullet passing on through the game and thereby failing to transfer most of its energy to it.
One bullet design which has attempted to overcome some of the above-mentioned problems of conventional bullets is the partitioned jacket bullet disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,003,420 and 3,069,748 which are also issued to J. A. Nosler. In this design, the lead core is divided into front and rear parts and the jacket has an intermediate transverse partition dividing it into front and rear pockets which contain the respective parts. While the integral partition generally holds the rear core part in place after impact as the jacket tip ruptures and curls outward and back into the mushroom configuration, the front core part, like the lead core of the conventional bullet, tends to separate from the rest of the bullet and can often disintegrate and disperse throughout the adjacent regions of the game, reducing the energy of the shock effect which can be delivered by the bullet to the game. Although the Nosler partition bullet sometimes has advantage over the conventional bullet in terms of weight retention, this advantage is more than offset by the disadvantages of the partition bullet in terms of the difficulty, complexity and costliness of its manufacturing process.
Consequently, in view of the above-described shortcomings in the Nosler partition bullet, a need still remains to come up with a bullet design which has improved performance in terms of diameter increase and retained weight characteristics during upsetting or mushrooming of the bullet and to come up with a method of manufacturing the bullet which is relatively simple and is reasonable in cost.